Slashdot Mirror
Edible "Intelligent Pills"
Ian Lamont sends along a brief note from the Industry Standard about "intelligent" pills that can help doctors record information about drug dosages, heart rate, respiratory rate, and other metrics. The pills, being developed by Proteus Biomedicals, have "digestible sensors" made out of food products and are activated by stomach fluids. A receiver that is similar to a skin patch picks up the data and can be passed on to a 3G mobile network, and from there to hospitals or doctors' offices. According to the Proteus site, the sensors cost a few cents per pill. The devices, currently in clinical trials, made #8 on Wired's list of the top technology breakthroughs of 2008.
can be passed on to a 3G mobile network
So... how secure is this? I can't imagine anyone other than my doctor (and not even him, probably) are that interested in my biometrics, but I am not comfortable with the information being broadcast over a network.
The summary links to a stub which links to the actual article, which describes how the network-enabled system could be used:
Caregivers or relatives will know when and what pills patients have taken or if the patients failed to take their medications.
So you can watch Grandma forget to take her pills - in real time!
Proteus ingestible event markers (IEMs) are tiny, digestible sensors made from food ingredients, which are activated by stomach fluids after swallowing.
The IEM is manufactured on silicon wafers...
Last I checked, humans cannot digest silicon, so this thing is not entirely "made from food ingredients".
Also, I would have been mighty surprised if food ingredients could transmit digital signals.
Honestly, that isn't fair. They won't start doing that to the current adults. They will just make it 'mandatory' for entrance into public schools, kind of like immunizations. Then it is just a matter of waiting for it to become universal.
I imagine this is not good news for a number of reasons...but one I can think of personally is pain medication users. Doctors nowadays are hesitant to prescribe schedule II meds because it is closely monitored and there are numerous cases where they have been reprimanded because of it, if not outright losing their licenses and possibly even facing criminal charges.
Chronic pain sufferers that have sought relief from strong meds inevitably build up tolerance to them, and in turn need to take more to achieve the same effect. Many Doctors assume addiction or worse, that patients are selling their meds (because of the high price they can get on the streets for them) when confronted with requests for higher dosages or quantities. Usually at this point, they try to pawn their patients off to pain clinics (which isn't generally a bad thing), refuse the request, or cut the patient off entirely. Either they don't understand titration or they just don't want to have patients who consume large quantities of pain meds to get the relief they need. Apparently certain types of drugs are monitored and one patient that has a high tolerance can affect the Doctors prescribing ratio, sending a red flag that he needs to be watched more closely. Because of this, many patients subsidize their prescribed drugs with street drugs to achieve the relief they need in order to maintain a decent quality of life. Illegal? Yes. Necessary? Sadly, in more cases than people realize.
I've seen where Doctors have forced patients to sign contracts with all kinds of stipulations...the consequence of any being broken that they would be immediately cut off and labelled a 'drug seeker'. When this happens, good luck to them getting prescriptions elsewhere. Surely if these 'reporting' pills are cost effective and reliable...it won't be long before most Doctors are requiring all pain patients to use them. Whether it's a lack of trust or not in the Doctor/patient relationship...they need to protect their livelihood and this may end up being the best method.